The remaining six municipalities in Mr. Clement’s electoral district that received project funding but whose mayors or reeves were not on the committee got a total of only $2.5-million, with the remainder going to North Bay, Ont., for runway improvements when it was being considered as an air link into Mr. Clement's Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont., riding, and the Ontario Transport Ministry as a contribution to bridge work already underway in the riding.
Two former town and township leaders who were not part of the private group, and whose municipalities applied for funding but did not receive any, told The Hill Times on Tuesday they were unaware of the committee’s existence. One replied “maybe it’s not very good, eh,” when he was asked about what the public might think of the system Mr. Clement set up to dispense the money. Opposition MPs are calling for a Commons committee inquiry because Mr. Clement, among other things, ran the project out of his own consitutency office.
Dick Smith, the mayor of Magnetawan, Ont., which had applied for money to build a security personnel facility for the summit, blamed the town’s failed attempt on its bid being too late and said the town had no complaints since it has received grants from other federal programs. He added that he was not aware of the committee until this week and learned from public sources last year which communities in the area had received support.
“We didn’t have any information about who got what until the newspapers started to get involved, started to publish that stuff,” Mr. Smith told The Hill Times.
The former reeve of the township of Murrich/Monteith, nearer to Huntsville, Ont., than Sundridge, Ont., which received $850,000 for new downtown sidewalks and a new downtown picnic shelter, said his township failed in a bid to get funding for highway improvements, based on its argument that it was best positioned for an alternate route out of Hunstville should an emergency arise.
Former reeve Glynn Robinson, however, even though he said his community has experienced difficulty getting federal and provincial support for a new senior citizen’s residence, was also resigned about losing the bid, since the money spent elsewhere will be a boon to the entire region, a centre of summer tourism.
“It did [fund] some projects which otherwise may never have been able to be done in our area, because we are kind of an area that has very little money to work with,” said Mr. Robinson. “The money that is here will stay here for years to come, not much like what happened in Toronto [for the G20 summit a few days later], where it’s all spent on policing and stuff like that, which is no return on your money, at least in this area.”
Mr. Robinson said the township reeve that was in charge of the bid and dealt with the officials who received it told him on Tuesday that the committee chaired by Mr. Clement was responsible for accepting or rejecting it.
The existence of the committee, which had its first meeting with Mr. Clement in the chair on Sept. 12, 2008, the year before the government announced it had $50-million to hand out for “legacy projects” as the G8 was in its planning stages, was disclosed in more than 800 pages of municipal documents the federal NDP obtained through Ontario’s provincial freedom of information law.
The committee was called the 2010 G8 Summit Local Area Leadership Group.
At one session, its members were warned by an Ontario Provincial Police officer giving a presentation that “confidentiality of the meeting is imperative” because general security plans were to be discussed. The group also included at least one federal public servant, who assisted as the municipalities began drafting screening funding applications that their own mayors would screen. The general manager of Deerhurst Resort, whose owners sold it after Ottawa poured $29-million into nearby Huntsville for municipal improvements, including a newly paved road to the resort, was also a member of the committee.
NDP MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay, Ont.) was astonished when The Hill Times informed him about how much money the municipalities represented on Mr. Clement’s committee received out of the total that was available.
He said he has not seen such an arrangement set up by a minister in any provincial or federal government before.
“Never, never, never, I mean pork is the oldest and most base political vice. That’s why we ensure that ministers can make recommendations, ministers can sign off but they can’t treat it like it was their own personal booty fund,” Mr. Angus said.
“That seems to be what happened here where they set up these meetings, they used their own paper, they didn’t have Government of Canada on it, it was like ‘call 1-800-Tony and you’ll get the money,’”
Liberal MP John McCallum (Markham-Unionville, Ont.), who along with the NDP wants an inquiry by the Commons Government Operations and Estimates Committee, was also surprised and has not before seen a Cabinet minister preside over a committee of civic officials, whose municipalities were seeking government funding, that actually took part in screening applications, with the active support of the minister’s constituency office.
“No, I’ve been in politics 11 years, including some years in government and Cabinet, and I have never heard of such decisions being made out of the constituency office of a minister. I don’t know if there’s any precedent,” Mr. McCallum said. “Why did he do it out of his constituency office? Was it to withhold information through Parliamentary privilege of some kind, or why? Secondly, we seem to get conflicting information about the role of public servants.”
A press aide to Mr. Clement played down Mr. Clement's involvement, as well as the select nature of the committee.
“All local elected officials knew they were welcome to take part,” Heather Hume, Mr. Clement’s press secretary, said in an email. “As you know, funding decisions were taken by the Minister of Infrastructure [then John Baird, who is now Foreign Affairs Minister] as per the municipalities’ individual priorities.”
The government has said Mr. Baird (Ottawa West-Nepean, Ont.) selected the final 32 projects from a total of 242 projects that had been proposed. But Mr. Clement told the Government Operations and Estimates Committee last June he gave the final list of 32 projects to Mr. Baird after he asked 15 mayors, to reduce the list of projects to 32 from 242. It appears the 15 mayors may have consisted of the nine municipal leaders on Mr. Clement's committee and six others.
Several of the 15 municipalities that received money submitted more than one project each for consideration.
Former Auditor Sheila Fraser identified the municipalities that received funding in a report her successor, John Wiersema, tabled in Parliament last June.
Origin
Source: Hill Times
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